On Wed, 8 Sep 1999, Bill Salmon wrote:

> It seems to me... not that that means much.. a useful function might be the
> ability to control a subscribers ability to modify their settings.
>......
> But now, we (or at least those of us running general newsgroups) must adapt
> to circumstances and users that are not cognizant of netiquette or
> protocol..

Actually, from a listserv administration view, many of us located
at Universities have sometimes been in the situation you describe
over the years.

As example, it is the faculty member who has a class mailing list and who
does not want his or her students to be able to "get off the list", set
themselves to NOMAIL, or make any other option changes other than those
made by the Instructor/List Owner. You can read the "captive audience"
discussions from years ago in the archives for this list or in LSTOWN-L.

While Listserv was developed as a mailing list management tool for
voluntary discussions managed by List Owners, it is frequently needed/used
in other venues where say, for example, "REVIEW= POSTMASTER"  or "REVIEW=
NONE" would be easier than how the same function is currently achieved to
comply with confidentiality requirements of electronic student data owned
by the University Registrar *here*.  I haven't tested this, but if Lsoft
tells me that review=postmaster is already functional, well, I'll take
them all out for a beer. ;-)

--Trish, Queen's University